Hard Disk Tuning?

I am setting up my 64 bit openSUSE 11.0 (with the Jacklab repo) for my recording studio. I have heard alot from others in the linux audio space about the benefits of hard disk tuning with hdparm. However, most of those resources are rather old. Can the use of hdparm still bring about significant performance benefits? Also, what is the correct procedure for tuning sdx drives? sdparm?

Running hdparm on my sda disk returns the following:

/dev/sda:
 IO_support    =  0 (default) 
16-bit)
 HDIO_GET_UNMASKINTR failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device
 HDIO_GET_DMA failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device
 HDIO_GET_KEEPSETTINGS failed: Inappropriate ioctl for device
 readonly      =  0 (off)
 readahead     = 256 (on)
 geometry      = 12289/255/63, sectors = 1250263728, start = 0

I looked a bit at sdparm but I can’t find any specific instructions. However, from the little I get from hdparm’s output, I take it that, first, hdparm does not want to play with my drives settings (Inappropriate ioctl for device) and two, that my drive is probably not being fully utilized.

Any hints?

Hi
I thought sdparm was for SCSI disks, not SATA?

Have a read here?
How fast is
your disk


Cheers Malcolm °¿° (Linux Counter #276890)
openSUSE 11.1 x86 Kernel 2.6.27.7-4-default
up 1 day 10:57, 3 users, load average: 1.79, 0.70, 0.31
GPU GeForce 6600 TE/6200 TE - Driver Version: 177.82

Don’t know if there is any help here:
HOWTOs - openSUSE